In a mobile communications network, one communications protocol, such as the stream control transmission protocol (SCTP) or the user datagram protocol (UDP), is generally used between a mobility management network element and an access node to process a paging message. However, it is extremely difficult to use only one communications protocol to meet a requirement of a user for reliable transmission of a paging message and, at the same time, avoid a problem of congestion on the mobility management network element that is caused by excessively heavy resource consumption.
For example, because the SCTP is a connection-oriented data packet transmission protocol, it is extremely reliable to process the paging message using the SCTP. However, for the purpose of implementing high reliability of the SCTP, a mobility management network element consumes a large quantity of resources when using the SCTP to process the paging message, and a problem of congestion on the mobility management network element may easily occur.
For another example, because the UDP features stateless switching and is connectionless, when the SCTP is used to process the paging message, when interacting with the access node, the mobility management network element may directly send a data packet using a port and according to a destination address. Therefore, when using the UDP to process the paging message, the mobility management network element consumes less resources, but at the same time, the reliability is relatively poor.